


Obnoxiously Perfect

by plutosrose



Series: Triskelion University Faculty [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Brief mentions of grief, Coffee date, Developing Relationship, Finding Your Crush and His Ex on Social Media, M/M, Mention of Past Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, Self-Esteem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: After hooking up with Steve at a faculty reception, Bucky consults Alpine for advice.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Triskelion University Faculty [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911763
Comments: 12
Kudos: 167
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Obnoxiously Perfect

Bucky spent another forty-five minutes at the faculty reception, trying to focus on what Sam was saying to him, but instead focused on the occasional glances that he was pretty sure that Steve was giving him. When he got back to his apartment, he still felt like his legs were made out of jelly when he walked through the door and set his keys down in the key bowl.

Alpine trotted out from behind the couch as he turned on the lights, and weaved between his legs, nuzzling her head against him. “You are not going to believe what happened at the reception, girl,” he murmured, as he picked her up and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.

It all seemed like kind of a bizarre dream. Maybe if he pinched himself hard enough, he would wake up, and he’d find that he’d slept through the reception. Or he’d imagined the whole thing and there was no one named Steve Rogers. Because how could there be? People that perfect didn’t exist in real life.

He changed into pajamas and laid down on the couch with his laptop, Alpine curling up on his stomach. “Okay, I know you’re going to tell me it’s a bad idea to Google him. But I have to okay? I just want to make sure that actually happened.”

Taking a deep breath, he typed the name “Steve Rogers” into the search bar. He was prepared for all sorts of possibilities. Maybe it was a fake name, and he and Nat were really spies. Maybe he’d imagined him. Maybe he was a con-artist. He wasn’t sure why a con-artist would sneak his way into a college faculty reception with shitty champagne, but hey, there were all kinds of scams someone could run, right?

The first few results that he scanned through weren’t particularly helpful--it didn’t look like his contact information had been added to the school’s website yet. One Steve Rogers was short and a redhead. Another was 95.

He sighed to himself and wondered if he should have opened the bottle of wine that was in the fridge. But honestly, the last thing that he wanted to do was text Steve after he’d had a bottle of wine and tell him what he really thought of him.

Then again, Steve was so fucking perfect that he’d probably find it endearing in some weird way.

Curiosity was getting the better of him, and before he could stop himself, he typed in Steve Rogers on Instagram.

“Don’t give me that look,” he grumbled to Alpine, who had lifted her head up to stare at him. “You’re so judgmental over the browser version.”

He scrolled through a few results before he stumbled upon a Steve that looked remarkably like the one that he’d met at the faculty reception.

There were pictures of views at the top of mountains, #myearlymorningrun - photos of colorful seafood dishes, #ilovebourbonstreet, and pictures of him with a woman with wavy brown hair and perfect lipstick posing in front of the Temple of Dendur #afternoonattheMet @margcarter.

This was a disaster. Steve Rogers was real and he was actually perfect.

Alpine meowed loudly and stuck her paw in his face. “If this is your way of telling me you don’t think he’s perfect, I think we’re going to have to disagree.”

He kept scrolling–there were pictures of him and Natasha out at bars, a picture of him, Natasha, and an equally attractive blonde woman he assumed was her ex-girlfriend (he occasionally googled her, sue him), and so, so many pictures of him and @margcarter.

Pictures of them at the Met, pictures of @margcarter smiling for the camera, with artfully arranged food in front of her.

What really made his breath catch though, were Steve’s drawings.

There were so many of them too--colorful and bright landscapes, drawing after drawing that he recognized as @margcarter, soft portraits with her looking away from the artist, portraits of her looking directly at the artist, shadows throwing the lines of her face into sharp relief.

Alpine meowed indignantly at the computer screen. “Yes, yes I know they’re getting divorced,” he grumbled. She was always so judgmental.

Before he could stop himself, he clicked on the link to her profile and sucked in a breath. Of course she had to be perfect too.

Margaret Carter  
London → NYC  
Life is an adventure, darling

“Fuck, she’s British,” Bucky grumbled to himself.

Before he could stop himself, he started scrolling through picture after picture–pictures of Margaret and Steve kissing under mistletoe, pictures of Margaret in a red dress and Steve in a suit, and...

“Holy hell yeah this is the British Ambassador,” Bucky murmured to Alpine, jaw dropping as he clicked the tag on the picture to confirm.

Steve was in the middle of a divorce with a British woman who knew the Ambassador and looked like she could have modeled if she really wanted to. And he had an entire bedroom for his cat and looked like he hadn’t seen the sun since the Ellis administration.

Alpine jabbed her paw in his face. “Ow! Don’t punch me.”

He rubbed his face as he stared down at her disapproving gaze. “Okay, I won’t think that way. But what am I supposed to do? Call him? Are you crazy?” He’d been perfectly fine in his Steve Rogers-less existence up until this point, and he could survive after.

She stared unblinkingly back at him.

“It just doesn’t make sense!” he grumbled. “He had that at one point.” he jabbed a finger at picture he had open on Instagram of Margaret looking over her shoulder coyly and kicking up one of her heels. The tag said it was her cousin’s wedding, but it didn’t matter, because he definitely was not that pretty.

After a staring contest with Alpine that Alpine won handily, Bucky swore loudly and reached for his phone. “Fine. I was going to wait, but if you think that it would be better to text him now, I’ll text him now.” Alpine had a way with people, he thought. He’d had a handful of short relationships out in Salt Lake, and she’d been the one, for example, to point out that Jack Rollins was a complete asshole.

“This is Bucky,” he said out loud as he typed in the words. “It was nice to meet you. Maybe we could get coffee sometime? You happy now?”

Alpine meowed indifferently, and leapt off of his lap and curled up on the floor underneath the television. “Really? You spent all that time complaining...”

He immediately placed the phone face down on the table to try and distract himself from waiting for a response. But after about a minute or two, curiosity got the better of him again.

And there was a new message–from Steve.

_Sure, you free tomorrow? I know a place :)_

Bucky made a very undignified squeaking noise that he would never admit to making in front of anyone but Alpine and dropped his phone.

“No, I....definitely read that wrong, right?” he muttered, picking up his phone and reading the text several times from beginning to end. It was only eight words, but it might as well have been a novel, full of symbolism and a variety of interpretations.

He looked over at Alpine for reassurance before he remembered that she couldn’t read.

 _It better not be the men’s restroom again. ;)_ He shouldn’t send that, right? Then he fumbled with his phone and hit the send button. “Crap.”

The reply came almost immediately. _Haha. ;) no. Love, Espressoed–8:30?_

Okay good, he didn’t have to move back to Utah.

“That sounds great,” he murmured as he typed out a response. Before he could stop himself, he added, “Can’t wait.”

He was fairly certain that his heart had completely stopped before another message appeared.

Me neither :) See you soon. was staring back at him. 

“Oh my God,” he murmured. “What have I done, Alpine?”

He glanced over to see that she was now sleeping. “Figures.”

-

The coffee shop that Steve knew, unfortunately, was the same one that Sam had told him to avoid because it was full of bad poetry, and apparently, occasionally polka music. He’d also scoffed at the name--Love, Espressoed.

Was there a way for him to project the aura of someone who hadn’t once laughed at the name of the place where his date (Christ) had suggested that they go? While he was at it, it would probably be a good idea to also project the aura of someone who hadn’t scrolled back 55 weeks in his Instagram feed too. 

And of course Steve was already there when he got there, because there was no way that the universe would allow him two seconds alone with his thoughts.

“Hey,” Steve smiled at him, waving him over. Bucky had a passing debate with himself over whether it would be unreasonable to say that he would commit murder for that smile.

“I didn’t want to order without you,” he said, holding the door open for him.

“Christ, he’s a gentleman,” he murmured under his breath.

“Sorry, did you say something?”

“Uh...I said oh look, they have cinnamon.” He gestured at the cinnamon buns in the glass display case.

Steve was smiling far too much to not have some idea of what he’d said.

-

A few minutes later, they were seated at a table that was honestly way too small for both of them. Bucky was pretty sure that he’d turned bright red because his knees were definitely pressing against Steve’s. Maybe he could blame it on the piping hot vanilla hazelnut latte that he had cradled in his hands.

He picked idly at the cinnamon bun that Steve had insisted on buying for him, wishing that he’d just admitted what he said, so he could be having a chocolate croissant for breakfast instead.

He was at a loss for what he was supposed to say, and every time he looked forward, he kept accidentally looking deeply into those stupidly perfect blue eyes. It was only when he looked off to the side that he noticed that one of the drawings--one of a shed by a pond--was signed with S. Rogers.

“Is this yours?” he asked, eyes roaming over the painting, trying to absorb as much detail as possible. The water was such a light and delicate shade of blue that it wasn’t really blue at all--in fact, it almost looked real.

“Oh!” Steve said with a hint of surprise in his voice that seemed to suggest that he hadn’t actually known that they were sitting right by one of his paintings (somehow, Bucky didn’t think this was true, but decided to let it slide for now). “Yeah, I moved in about a month and a half ago and saw they were asking for work from local artists.”

“It’s really good.”

“It’s really not, I can see the spot where I sneezed and dropped my paintbrush from here,” Steve said, taking a sip of his coffee, and Bucky had to smile a little, because maybe he wasn’t as obnoxiously perfect as he seemed like he was.

“Just take the compliment,” Bucky quipped, and he was suddenly grateful that he was sitting down, because the way that Steve smiled actually made him weak in the knees, like this was a romance novel and not real life. “Is it based off of a real place?”

Steve shook his head. “I was really sick growing up and raised by a single mom, so...we didn’t exactly get to travel much. Mostly just imagined places I’d go.”

Bucky swore that he could feel his heart clench in his chest. “Where was this?”

“Oh, this was um...it’s kind of stupid. It’s this town I made up--every winter my mom would promise that if I got better we could go on a trip, and it just became this story we’d tell each other. That we’d go and live in a big mansion by the ocean, and we’d meet lots of interesting people that would become our friends. The people were usually characters in whatever book she was reading me at the time.”

Perfect, Calvin Klein blond Steve Rogers was in front of him looking some combination of sad, nostalgic, and bashful that Bucky suddenly felt the impulse to pinch himself just to make sure that he hadn’t also imagined a coffee date.

“That sounds really sweet,” Bucky murmured, smiling softly.

“Yeah,” Steve smiled sadly. “I miss her a lot, and I guess sometimes it feels like a good way to connect with her. She passed away when I was eighteen.”

Bucky almost choked on his latte in his haste to try and say something comforting. In the end, all he was able to get out was, “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” After a moment’s pause, the sad look on Steve’s face started to slowly disappear. “...so, what about you? Nat offered to tell me some things, but I wanted to hear about you from well, you.”

At the mention of Nat, Bucky choked on his cinnamon bun.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky gasped. He’d get over the fact that the person he was on a date with was friends with his ex-fiancee. “Well, I grew up in Brooklyn. I have a sister--Becca--she moved to Indiana a couple of years ago when she got married. Parents moved out there too. They live in some town where there’s only like 200 people or something. Did my post-doc out in Utah and was looking for a change, so Sam did me a favor. He was already working here in the psych department.”

“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Nat.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky shrugged. “It’s been a while.” She was clearly doing better than fine, with her Instagram deals and her tags on the New York City Ballet’s official page. “But thanks.”

His mind turned to the @margcarter Instagram page that he’d scrolled through for an embarrassingly long time. The fact that Steve hadn’t mentioned her at all was making him slightly nervous, but slightly relieved at the same time.

It occurred to him that he’d been making long, unblinking eye contact with Steve for the last few seconds, with Steve staring right back at him.

“So...do you like drawing landscapes?” Bucky asked, busying himself with taking a sip of his latte in the hope of smoothing the moment over.

“It’s okay, but I especially love drawing people,” Steve said, his gaze lingering on Bucky for long enough to make him want to writhe in his seat. “I could draw you sometime, if you wanted.”

A blush crept up his neck, and before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “Do you want to have dinner at my place sometime?”

A smile slowly spread across Steve’s features, and Bucky’s stomach twisted itself in a knot. He was going to blame the fact that he’d even asked on that smile. And the fact that Steve seemed to be implying that he would like to possess a sexy drawing of him (that was what he was implying, wasn’t it?). His brain didn’t know what to do with that information.

“Sure Bucky, that sounds like it would be really nice.”

(Alpine was going to have a field day when he told her about this).

-

“He’s coming over for dinner.”

Alpine looked back at him, extremely unimpressed.

“Yeah I know this is our apartment, but I really like him, and it was the first thing that came out of my mouth.”

Alpine stretched and looked back at him. “Yeah, I know we should have gone to a restaurant instead. I have a week to learn how to cook.”

Alpine returned to looking unimpressed before falling asleep on the countertop in the kitchen. He was going to have to try to get her to stop doing that if he was actually going to cook there.

-

A week later, when Steve came over for dinner, Alpine hissed loudly at him no less than four times (actually coming over to the couch to scream when they had started to make out during the movie Steve had picked), including when Bucky closed and locked his bedroom door (because it was startlingly easy for Alpine to open unlocked doors). While Alpine doled out the best advice, she definitely didn’t like having someone else in their space.

Steve pressed him against the door and ran his hands along his sides for a moment. “I think your cat hates me.”

“Actually, she likes you a lot more than she likes Sam. The first time he visited me in Salt Lake she jumped on his head.”

Steve laughed, a low and throaty laugh that most definitely went straight to Bucky’s dick. “Well, I hope I’ll be around enough to be able to change her mind.”

Feeling a bit more bold, Bucky grinned and leaned up to kiss him deeply. “Depends, you going to ravage me, Professor Rogers?”

Steve grinned, wide and bright. Bucky wouldn’t have been surprised if his legs had turned into jelly.

“I believe that can be arranged, Professor Barnes,” he purred in his ear, and wrapping his arms around his shoulders.

Yeah, Alpine was going to have to get used to Steve, God willing. He’d make it up to her later.


End file.
